Information is a valuable resource in today's information age. For example, consumer information is valuable to merchants that sell goods and services at many levels, from product development to marketing, advertising, and sales. In order to acquire consumer information, some merchants employ member accounts to facilitate accumulation of consumer data (e.g., who purchases what, and when and where it was purchased, etc.). Merchants sometimes provide discounts and other benefits in exchange for the consumers' memberships. As a specific example, grocery stores sometimes provide discounts on groceries to consumers that sign up for member accounts.
Similarly, some digital media providers (e.g., Netflix, iTunes, etc.) track the distribution and use of media content they provide to consumers. It may be relatively easy for digital media providers to track what content is provided to and played by which customers, as their customers generally have user accounts that are monitored by the media providers, and dedicated media players that transmit use data to the digital media providers.